things that make me happy

things that made me happy this morning:

• reading the afterword about the book I just finished, the Jungle, a major critique of capitalism an important example of the "muckraking" tradition, and finding out that this one man, this one book, led to government regulations of the food industry (even though his real intent was to improve conditions for the laborers) *

  "An instant best-seller, Sinclair's book reeked with the stink of the Chicago stockyards. He told how dead rats were shoveled into sausage-grinding machines; how bribed inspectors looked the other way when diseased cows were slaughtered for beef, and how filth and guts were swept off the floor and packaged as "potted ham."In short, "The Jungle" did as much as any animal-rights activist of today to turn Americans into vegetarians.But it did more than that. Within months, the aroused -- and gagging -- public demanded sweeping reforms in the meat industry.President Theodore Roosevelt was sickened after reading an advance copy. He called upon Congress to pass a law establishing the Food and Drug Administration and, for the first time, setting up federal inspection standards for meat.

• Seeing this on a licence plate on the way to work: ICE 9
  (From Cat's Cradle, great book by Kurt Vonnegut)

* UPDATE: less happy- its still an uphill battle with regards to both conditions for laborers and santiary food production (not to mention humane treatment and slaughter of animals!) according to this recent article :(

From a more recent expose, Fast Food Nation:

The second half looks at the product itself: where it is manufactured (in a handful of enormous factories), what goes into it (chemicals, feces) and who is responsible (monopolistic corporate executives). In harrowing detail, the book explains the process of beef slaughter and confirms almost every urban myth about what in fact "lurks between those sesame seed buns."

While cataloguing assorted evils with the tenacity and sharp eye of the best investigative journalist, he uncovers a cynical, dismissive attitude to food safety in the fast food industry and widespread circumvention of the government's efforts at regulation enacted after Upton Sinclair's similarly scathing novel exposed the meat-packing industry 100 years ago.